Archive for the 'Religion' Category

Bill Gertz with the Washington Times is reporting that a specialist on Islamic law has been fired from his position at the Pentagon.

Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism, has been fired from his position on the military’s Joint Staff. The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

Mr. Coughlin was notified this week that his contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, effectively halting the career of one of the U.S. government’s most important figures in analyzing the nature of extremism and ultimately preparing to wage ideological war against it.

He had run afoul of a key aide to Mr. England, Hasham Islam, who confronted Mr. Coughlin during a meeting several weeks ago when Mr. Islam sought to have Mr. Coughlin soften his views on Islamist extremism.

Mr. Coughlin was accused directly by Mr. Islam of being a Christian zealot or extremist “with a pen,” according to defense officials. Mr. Coughlin appears to have become one of the first casualties in the war of ideas with Islamism.

The officials said Mr. Coughlin was let go because he had become “too hot” or controversial within the Pentagon.

Misguided Pentagon officials, including Mr. Islam and Mr. England, have initiated an aggressive “outreach” program to U.S. Muslim groups that critics say is lending credibility to what has been identified as a budding support network for Islamist extremists, including front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr. Coughlin wrote a memorandum several months ago based on documents made public in a federal trial in Dallas that revealed a covert plan by the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian-origin Islamist extremist group, to subvert the United States using front groups. Members of one of the identified front groups, the Islamic Society of North America, has been hosted by Mr. England at the Pentagon.

After word of the confrontation between Mr. Coughlin and Mr. Islam was made public, support for Mr. Coughlin skyrocketed among those in and out of government who feared the worst, namely that pro-Muslim officials in the Pentagon were after Mr. Coughlin’s scalp, and that his departure would be a major setback for the Pentagon’s struggling efforts to develop a war of ideas against extremism. Blogs lit up with hundreds of postings, some suggesting that Mr. England’s office is “penetrated” by the enemy in the war on terrorism.

Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for Mr. England, said “no one in the deputy’s office had any input into this decision” by the Joint Staff to end Mr. Coughlin’s contract. A Joint Staff spokesman had no immediate comment.

I have always reported the truth, whether popular or not.  Using some open source references and an intelligence source, in Anbar, in Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq, I reported on the high concentration of indigenous fighters within the insurgency in Anbar, contrary to the popular notion of a fight exclusively against al Qaeda.  I was discussing co-opting the insurgents before discussion of “concerned citizens” became current and popular.  However, contrary to Dave Kilcullen who argued against the idea of a single fighter engaging for religious reasons, I argued that there was a strong international element within Iraq functioning as terrorists due to religious motivation.  See:

Religion and Insurgency: A Response to Dave Kilcullen
Smith Responds
More on Dave Kilcullen vs. Smith

I also have made it clear from my coverage of Operation Alljah in Fallujah that the primary enemy were foreign fighters: Chechens, Africans, men of Arab descent, and men of Far Eastern descent.  These men, some of whom came from thousands of miles away to conduct jihad against America, fought for religious reasons.  The primary aim in this accuracy and truthfulness, while rising above political talking points for either party, is to understand the makeup of the insurgency and thereby be able to craft a strategy against them.

There are the typical vacuous accolades for the Pentagon over the ejection of Coughlin - statements such as “As far as I’m concerned, this is a good sign, particularly in combination with the Pentagon’s consideration of an Iraq “Marshall Plan”. (sic) It means that they’re abandoning the “Islam is evil” mindset that has pervaded the White House and the Pentagon for most of the war in favor of a more moderate position which includes reaching out to the vast moderate Muslim community; something that must happen if we are to win the Long War.”  This sentiment betrays its lack of observation of the press coverage of the global jihad over the last five years.  The current administration refuses to use terms like this, and present leadership has even jettisoned the monicker “long war” set in place by General Abizaid, who should know about this given his background and knowledge of the Middle East.

A clear and honest understanding of the current global situation requires the admission that while there is a large percentage of the Muslim community which doesn’t wish to conduct jihad against anyone, much less the West, there is still another fraction which nurtures a hermeneutic that requires them to do just that, this hermeneutic being a cornerstone of their Muslim faith.  This hermeneutic is as old as Islam.

So what can the Sinjar records tell us about the sacking of Stephen Coughlin?  Not much specifically, but generally, they can tell us a lot about the motivations of the foreign fighters who have travelled to Iraq over the last several years.  The increased participation in jihad by Libyans is well known, and upon incorporation of the LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) into al Qaeda, senior leadership in the LIFG stated their reason for sending so many fighters to Iraq.

…our  brothers  are  in  need  of  the  backing  and  aid  of  the  Muslim  peoples,  with  their  bodies  and  wealth,  with  shelter  and  prayer,  and  with  incitement….  There  is  no  way  to  establish  and  preserve  states  other  than  Jihad  in  the  Path  of  Allah  and  Jihad  alone….This  is  the  path,  and  anything  else  is  from  the  whispers  of  Satan.

It  is  with  the  grace  of  God  that  we  were  hoisting  the  banner  of  jihad  against  this  apostate  regime  under  the  leadership  of  the  Libyan  Islamic  Fighting  Group,  which  sacrificed  the  elite  of  its  sons  and  commanders  in  combating  this  regime  whose  blood  was  spilled  on  the  mountains  of  Darah,  the  streets  of  Benghazi,  the  outskirts  of  Tripoli,  the  desert  of  Sabha,  and  the  sands  of  the  beach.

Finally, formal changes in doctrine are recommended by the authors at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a result of the Sinjar records, when they state that:

The  Syrian  and  Libyan  governments  share  the  United  States’  concerns  about  violent  salafi-jihadi  ideology  and  the  violence  perpetrated  by  its  adherents.   These  governments,  like  others  in  the  Middle  East,  fear  violence  inside  their  borders  and  would  much  rather  radical  elements  go  to  Iraq  rather  than  cause  unrest  at  home.   U.S.  and  Coalition  efforts  to  stem  the  flow  of  fighters  into  Iraq  will  be  enhanced  if  they  address  the  entire  logistical  chain  that supports  the  movement  of  these  individuals—beginning  in  their  home  countries  –  rather  than  just  their  Syrian  entry  points.

Coughlin was doing his job, and for that he was sacked.  Yet government sponsored institutions such as West Point are operating under the assumption that they need to tell the truth about the jihad that is currently being waged.  As observed by LTC Joseph C. Myers:

“Islam is a religion of peace” is fine for public policy statements, but is not and cannot be the point of departure for competent military or intelligence analysis … it is in fact a logical flaw under any professional research methodology … you have stated the conclusion before you have done the analysis.

The bureaucracy at the Pentagon has allowed political talking points to cloud their judgment.  Coughlin, a needed and highly qualified expert, is the target of this clouded judgment - and the militant jihadists have claimed yet another victim, this time by using stooges at the Pentagon to do their bidding.

The Holidays are certainly a time to remember those who serve us, especially those in the way of harm.  It is quite appropriate for a Military blog to convey love, deep gratitude and sincere appreciation for the hard service of being in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan any time, but so much more during the holiday season.  This is an especially hard time for the troops who wish more than anything else to be with loved ones.

But the purest love is given to us by God in His son, Jesus Christ, the Word incarnate, and this is what we celebrate during the Christmas season.  When so many are confused about what true religion means, it should be remembered that the message is not that mankind needs the perfect example, although the life of Christ was perfect.  Rather, it is that mankind needs a savior, and this was the reason He came to earth.

” … and she will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins … Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which translated means, ‘God with us’.”  Matthew 1:21-23.

I wish all of my readers a very merry Christmas this holiday season, and leave you with a video of beautiful music.  May you be joyful and with family.

In June of 2007 we discussed Constabulary Operations and Prison Overcrowding, in which I said that “I do not believe in the healing, therapeutic or rehabilitative powers of imprisonment,” but that we were facing a prison overcrowding problem of major proportions going forward if we continue to engage in constabulary operations in Iraq.

In the following articles:

Religion and Insurgency: A Response to Dave Kilcullen
Smith Responds
A Modest Proposal

I discussed my views concerning religion and insurgency, and that contrary to Kilcullen’s view that there isn’t a single fighter who actually fights for the insurgency in Iraq for religious reasons, religion can provide a robust understanding of the motivations of all peoples in all of their actions, not just insurgents.

It appears that the commanders who are concerned with pragmatic affairs and who are faced with actual, real life day-to-day problems are following counsel that is similar to my own as it regards prisons (they need to be emptied or more need to be constructed) and religion (we need to know and act on what the enemy believes).

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, commanding general of detainee operations in Iraq, is fighting what he has called “the battlefield of the mind.” He has instituted extensive screening of incoming prisoners and has made available about 30 training and education courses, including religion and civics, to the 25,188 prisoners under his control.

At a news conference last week, he said that once a person is in custody at his facilities, Camp Cropper near Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, “we spend a lot of time learning about them now, studying their motivations . . . why they’re fighting, who they fight for — more so than we’ve ever known before.”

At Cropper and Bucca, he said, there is “an assessment phase, and we take 72 hours and then we work really hard on categorizations.” Based on those assessments, which include having imams evaluate prisoners on their religious beliefs, a decision is made about where to house them in the detention facility.

As Stone was describing his program, the Multi-National Force-Iraq Joint Contracting Command was advertising for 12 contract intelligence analysts to work for Stone at Cropper and Bucca for six to 18 months, beginning in March.

Their jobs will be mainly to “conduct in-processing assessment of new detainees coming into the theater internment facilities,” according to the statement of work. They will screen the circumstances of each detainee’s capture and any sworn statements or intelligence about the person contained in an accompanying packet.

After that, the work statement says, the contracted analysts will “determine what category a detainee is assigned to based on age, religion, threat level and insurgent group affiliation.” They will also decide “where to place the detainee in the segregation plan.”

Stone said the compounds are not organized by geographical areas, so most prisoners “don’t really know each other.” Because extremists are “generally the guys that know each other . . . and they come in to set up kind of a gang court,” people from the same areas are spread out across the prison.

The courses they take, almost all of which are voluntary, include basic education, vocational training and religion. The religion course, run by one of 43 imams working on the program, lasts four days.

The civics course, which each detainee must take before he is released, covers “why you should try to get an education — why you should try to have a job,” Stone said. Other courses touch “on how you control anger, the oath of peace, the sacredness of life and property and references back to the Koran,” he added. The demand for classes has “stripped” the 150 teachers he has available.

“I don’t change people,” Stone said. “Those people or God changes them, not me, but we do set in motion the ability to have that change take place.”

Stone sees the overall program as working with detainees so that “they cannot conduct an insurgency inside the wire.” He added that he hopes that detainees “someday maybe even work with us and, of course, by telling us who the bad guys are.”

One result already seen, he said, is that moderates in the prisons are identifying extremists, thus facilitating their segregation from the rest of the population. At Camp Bucca, about 1,000 extremists were identified and pulled from among the 21,000 prisoners, and “that made a big difference,” he said.

In addition to being theologically and anthropologically sound, this approach is pragmatic - and it is the approach we have advocated from the beginning.

There is yet another discussion thread at the Small Wars Journal that convinces me that I must try one more time to explain the involvement that coalition forces should have with culture and religion in a counterinsurgency campaign.  Much confusion swirls around this issue because, in part, people reflexively respond (a) by assuming that you are calling for a holy war, or (b) assuming that your mindset is one of a social scientist hunting for another lever to pull or button to push to cause certain reactions.  The former category reacts to my modest proposal by denying that religion should have any role in how one man relates to another, with the later category honestly attempting to engage the issue, but as counterinsurgency professionals using ideas such as center of gravity and societal power structure.  Neither camp really gets it yet.  So let’s use two simple examples that might show how religion and cultural understanding might aid the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq.  These examples are not meant to be sweeping or comprehensive, nor am I constructing doctrine in a short, simple little article.  I am attempting to make this simple rather than complex.

In the first example, I will imagine that I am a chaplain in Iraq serving U.S. troops.  I will endeavor to ensure that the spiritual and life issues of the men under my responsible charge are squared away, but along with this, I approach my Commanding Officer and ask to arrange a meeting between the local Imam and me.  The meeting is arranged, and begins with me thanking the Imam for meeting with me, and telling them that even though I am Christian, I am very impressed by the ’smartness’ of the Kalam cosmological argument, and that the Islamic scholars who teach this have reason to be proud.  We share food and talk about family, and then I request that he teach me something of his faith.  The reason, I share with him, is that I want to ensure that the men who represent the United States act with honor.  There will be many cultural and religious things of which they are unaware, and families, the man of the house, and women might take offense to actions behind which there was no intention of causing such a reaction.  He can tell me things that he would not say to the Commanding Officer, I tell him, and he can trust me with confidentiality.  I will work with the CO or simply with the men, but work I will, very hard, to ensure that no offensive action is taken that would violate the religious sensibilities of his people.  I know that this can work, since a national religious conference has already occurred, put on by the Department of Defense at the request of Muslim clerics who approached our Chaplains as fellow holy men.  I am but a single Chaplain, but I believe that I can take the intent behind the national conference and apply it at a local level.  Finally, I end my meeting with the Imam by requesting a series of meetings so that I can learn his faith and work with him and his people to ease their suffering to the extent that I am capable.

In the next example, it is the year 2004 and Sadr is in the custody of U.S. Marines (the Marines of 3/2).  I know that there is a large group of Shi’a who are moderate, and in fact, many Sunni look upon them as uncommitted Muslims.  I also know that many see the Sunni as hardened Muslims who follow the Salafist or Wahhabist jihadist traditions.  But as a religious man who has his attenna up with these things, I know that these generalized views can lead to very wrong conclusions.  I know that the Sunnis of Western Iraq are much more secular than the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, and want none of the radicalism of the hard line schools.  Recently slain Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha was a chain smoker whose hands would have eventually been cut off by the jihadists to stop him from his smoking.

On the other hand, I know that Sistani has not yet met with coalition forces or representatives of coalition forces because we are the “great Satan.”  Likewise, Sadr is a believer in a form of radical Shi’ism that comes from the Mullahs in Iran, and can be trusted only to subvert a stable Iraq that allies with the West against religious extremism.  I manage to convince coalition authorities not to release Sadr.  In this example I manage to use my knowledge of religion to diagnose which sect can be trusted and which cannot.

Such can be the results of a religious understanding between coalition forces and the people of Iraq.  This understanding can be there if it is not contrived or forced, as some sort of tool of counterinsurgency appealing to societal power structures or centers of gravity in order to persuade the Iraqis to do something or be a certain way for us.  I am in favor of honest and open dialogue in military matters concerning the enemy, and likewise in matters religious and cultural.

Chaplain (CPT) William Johnson, the 1-8 Combined Arms Battalion chaplain, gives candy to Iraqi children on the streets of Balad.

See also Chaplains as Liaisons with Religious Leaders: Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.

W. Thomas Smith, Jr., has yet another great article, this one timely and encouraging.  It concerns religion on the front lines.  An excerpt follows:

… Combat soldiers and Marines prayed openly and unashamedly, as did their officers. Not all of them mind you, but a noticeable number. Even the ones who cursed, pardon the cliché and the reference, like sailors.

As I mentioned at “The Tank,�? I never sat down to a meal with Lt. Col. Jason Bohm (task force commander of 1st Battalion, 4th Marines) that the man didn’t fold his hands and bow his head to thank God for what was before him. And there were always hundreds of his Marines and sailors sitting at tables around him.

Read his entire article at National Review Online.  I recently wrote an article in which I mentioned Lt. Col. William F. Mullen and Lt. Col. Jason Bohm, entitled The Warrior Scholar.  Apparently, warrior-scholar Lt. Col. Jason Bohm is not ashamed to deploy and display his faith, and in my e-mail exchanges with Lt. Col. William Mullen, he has encouraged me to continue my prayers for the Marines of 2/6.  Again, courage on the field of battle, courage in their faith.

Those less courageous wringe their hands over my disputes with Dave Kilcullen concerning insurgency and religion (and here and here), fearing that spirituality might somehow incite ‘holy war’ between countries.  Those who have no time for pedantic and silly disputes simply engage in faith and duty.  Smith further argues that:

I’m convinced this openly expressed spirituality is one of the reasons Army and Marine officers seem to be making greater headway in terms of ground-zero diplomacy with sheiks and tribal elders than the rank-and-file civilian diplomats. The Iraqis simply trust American soldiers, their word, and their sincerity, because of their spirituality.

Whenever Col. Bohm and other officers met with an Iraqi, it was always with an ever-so slight bow, a right hand over the heart followed by an extended right hand; a warm smile and a greeting, “Salam alikom, (peace unto you), my friend.�?

The Americans meant it. The Iraqis knew it. And the Marines were taught to get into the practice of doing the same thing on foot patrols … but only if it was a sincere expression of “peace�? toward another.

Soldiers from Delta Company, 1st Cavalry Division, 12th Infantry Regiment, pray prior to a foot patrol in Khalis, Iraq.  (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway)

U.S. soldiers pray in a circle before leaving Camp Victory for their patrol mission on the streets of Baghdad July 7, 2007. REUTERS/Nikola Solic (IRAQ)